


Killtopia

by choomchoom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Banter, Domestication, F/F, Gen, Outer Space, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 10:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12909762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: "Aw, c'mon Lug—we've been in stickier situations than this."A chance to escape a prison sentence leads Anode and Lug to the infamous Killtopia, a space station run by an AI that kills visitors who break the rules. Anode has never been very good at following rules.





	Killtopia

Killtopia

 

“I know that this looks bad, but just think about it—we could be dead, we could be on Cybertron, we could be—” Anode stopped herself before saying the word _separated_ —it was entirely possible that Lug would _prefer_ for them to be separated at this precise moment. “All I’m saying is that all things considered? We could do _much_ worse than a prisoner transfer shuttle.”

Anode stopped. She waited for the expected rebuke about how yes, in fact, a prisoner transport shuttle was indeed pretty bad, as these things ranked, or an exasperated “Are you _done_?” but Lug, beside her, was silent. Frowning at the floor and refusing to even look at Anode.

Okay. Still mad. They’d been over this, though, dozens of times over the course of centuries. All Anode had to do was talk until Lug finally got un-mad at her and then they’d figure out a way out of this.

“Just think. We could be floating through outer space with no ship, we could be trapped in a room with a bomb, we could be back in that awful creepy bar back on Danu, we could be being held at gunpoi-“ Anode stopped mid-word when she felt—naturally—a gun, digging into her spinal strut.

“You two with me,” the security mech behind her grunted. Anode had been so focused on Lug that she hadn’t even noticed that they’d landed. Lug, who had moved on from ignoring Anode to glaring at Anode, which was a good sign, but also had a gun pointed at her, which was a bad sign.

Not having much choice, Anode followed one of the guards through the hallways while another kept his gun trained on her back. “Who do you think we _are_?” Anode asked that one, and the identical-looking mech who had his gun focused on Lug. “Mass murderers? Pit fighters? Assassins? We were arrested for stealing from a museum, the damn thing was even _insured—_ ” Before she could really get going, the mech with the gun used it to shove her forward, sending her stumbling into what looked like an office.

“Misconduct! As I was saying, we are _non-violent_ —”

“Quiet.” The sheer size of the mech in front of them, even seated behind a desk, made Anode obey on instinct.

She caught Lug looking disappointed in her peripheral vision, though, so she opened her mouth to continue. “And here I thought that this was some kind of _reputable_ facility—"

“Do you want a pardon or not?” the huge mech behind the desk growled. Anode didn’t flinch, but she only managed because of a lifetime of training at acting not scared of people who could probably squash her with one fist and minimal effort. He waved one of said fists—well, hands—at the three security mechs, who scurried out the door in quick succession.

“Pardons sound good,” Lug said. _Thank Primus, she speaks_.

“Complete one job for me and they’re yours,” the big growly mech who was, on reflection, probably the boss of the others, growled. He reached into a drawer in his desk—which was eye level with Anode—and pulled something out.

“We’ll take it!” Anode said, reaching up before she even saw what the object was. To her right, Lug was glaring again.

\--

“This is a _completely different situation._ How are you still mad?”

“It’s not a different situation! We got _caught_ , we got _arrested_ , they put _tracking devices_ on us—” Lug brandished hers with a wild swing of the affected arm, the silver cuff obviously out of place against her red frame “—and the only reason we’re not still on that ship is because they want us to do a frankly _way_ too easy sounding job that they could only have given us because it’s too dangerous for them to do themselves!”

Anode gave herself a moment to reflect before replying. The thing about the mission being dangerous wasn’t inaccurate, especially since—

“ _Killtopia_ , Anode.” She had paused too long. “That thing hasn’t changed direction, so the only place we could _possibly_ be heading for is Killtopia. We would have been better off in jail!”

“Disagree! We may have tracking devices, but at least we’re not in chains anymore. And we may be headed to Killtopia, but guess what? We’ll do what we do best and get that whatever-it-is back to the growly guy, dust ourselves off, and then we get to say we survived Killtopia!”

“ _You_ will not get to say that because if we actually survive this— _which we won’t_ —I am going to kill you.”

Anode couldn’t help but break into a grin at that. This was average-level Lug grumpiness, the kind that saved both their afts more often than not, and that Anode found too endearing to really passionately argue with. “If we get through this unscathed I promise I’ll submit willingly to your killing hand. What were you thinking, beheading? Spark snuffing? Something slower, torture, maybe?”

“First I’m going to pluck your fingers off, one by one,” Lug muttered. “Oh wait! That’s not me! That’s _what Killtopia does to people who steal._ ”

“I’d like to point out that we’re most likely not going to be stealing _from_ Killtopia,” Anode said. “The growly guy said that this thingamajig was his, right?”

“The _warden_ of the _prison_ that we were _sent to_ ,” Lug enunciated, “said so, yes. You believe him? Were you born yesterday?”

Anode rolled her optics. “I don’t trust him, but I believe him. What’s he got to lose? If he just wanted us dead he could have had those grunts shoot us. Instead, he gave us a ship and whatever this is.” She held up the round tracking device that the warden had placed in her hand back on the prison station. A blue light emanated from one small circle, telling her that they were going in the direction of their target and that they had gotten closer since leaving the prison station. “If his only goal was our gruesome deaths, why would he go to all the effort?”

Lug sighed affectedly. “I don’t know, Anode. But I don’t like this. If it’s really all about the thing that we’re retrieving for him, why wouldn’t he tell us what it is?”

Anode could only shrug at that. “Well, maybe we’ll figure that out when we see it.” She plunked herself down in the copilot’s seat, crossing her legs as she stared out into space.

\--

Killtopia. Kill fragging topia. Kill fragging topia and Anode and her stupid tendency to jump into any new experience any way forward any way to _ruin Lug’s damn life_ with her antics and…her shenanigans. Tomfoolery. All of the above.

Lug stewed a little as they approached the station. In truth, she had pretty much worked off her anger at Anode’s spectacular lack of any forethought in decision making ages ago—really, she had worked most of it off decades ago, and these days all it took was a few irritated barbs to get her back to neutral. But that wasn’t the worst thing about this mission. No, that was the aptly named Kill _fragging_ topia.

She watched the station get closer, going from a blip on the radar to the size of an old collectible shanix coin after a few minutes. She’d heard stories about Killtopia, because hadn’t everyone? Killtopia was a failed experiment by the Galactic Council, or by the species of advanced organics on a relatively nearby planet that the Council had contracted to build the spaceport, or by both of them indiscriminately—it depended who you asked. No matter who was at fault, it was obvious that Killtopia was a disaster.

The idea had been a spaceport run entirely by AI—no Council oversight, no need for deliveries from surrounding planets, no need for staff—just an efficient place to fuel in the midst of long journeys through largely untraveled space. It was a prototype for a series of stations that would have been manufactured if Killtopia hadn’t been a catastrophe.

See, for a spaceport run by AI to work, there needed to be rules, right? Like, no parking at charging stations you weren’t using, pay for the fuel you take, don’t kill people—that sort of thing. The species that had designed the port had programmed the AI with these reasonable rules, but had left one dangerous loophole—the AI, based on its experiences, would be able to generate additional rules for the station at its discretion. It would also have the authority for deciding the punishment for breaking those rules.

Naturally, the AI had found the loophole and run it into the ground. There were rules upon rules upon rules, rules that Lug was trying her best to memorize from the book of them in the ship’s database, but the list took up so many terabytes of data that she knew she wouldn’t even be able to read them all before they landed. Anode, of course, was making no similar effort, just sitting with her feet propped up on the dashboard and her hands crossed casually behind her head, clearly raring to go on her next adventure.

People still visited Killtopia for the same reason that it had been built: because it was the only place to refuel in this sector of space. Better to risk death on Killtopia than confront the certainty of death from a stranding. People still went, and people still died.

It wasn’t called Killtopia originally, of course. In the rulebook, it was still Station KT-001. But Killtopia it had become.

Lug was eighty-four percent of the way through the rules when she ship’s automatic docking procedure started. With a huff, she closed the rulebook on her HUD, but not before she’d downloaded it for later reference.

“No!” she yelled, when she noticed just which docking bay the ship was headed towards. “We can’t park there!” She switched control of the ship to manual and guided them towards the visitor port.

“What? Why?” 

“That’s the _cargo port_.” Lug huffed a sigh when it became clear that Anode had no idea what she was talking about. “Cargo port limits parking to two kliks because supply ships have to go in there! Anyone planning to stay longer than that needs to park at visitor port.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s Killtopia, Anode! Of course it’s insane. I should probably mention that the punishment for parking at cargo port for too long is total annihilation of your ship.” _And since this ship_ isn’t ours, _it’s an especial issue,_ she thought.

“You’re right, I probably could have guessed that.” Anode’s voice was faster than usual as Lug guided them towards visitor port. Nervous. Good. A reasonable amount of nervous was what kept mechs alive.

Lug successfully landed the ship, keeping the screeching noises of landing gear on spaceport docking to a minimum. She was just abut to relax and congratulate herself for a job well done when a loud blaring alarm started sounding.

ATTENTION. YOU ARE OUT OF BOUNDS. SHIPS NOT REGISTERED TO THE GALACTIC COUNCIL OR THE ADACEMIC CONSCORTIUM MUST PARK AT THE SECONDARY FUELING STATION. IF YOUR SHIP REMAINS PARKED OUT OF BOUNDS IT WILL BE ERADICATED. YOU HAVE ONE KLIK TO COMPLY. ATTENTION. YOU ARE OUT OF BOUNDS—

Lug scrambled to reactivate the ship’s power and steer them out of that docking bay. Not a good start, not a good start at all.

\--

Anode bounded out of the ship once they were finally properly parked. The light emanating from the device she held had steadily become brighter the closer they got to the station, but Lug’s little detour to park in the proper place to keep their crummy prison-owned ship from being ‘annihilated’ had taken them further from the whatever it was they were looking for.

The room they had parked in was massive, nearly-new looking from the combination of cleaning droids Killtopia was equipped with and the relative underuse of the station since its inception. It was gigantic, with ships parked on the walls and all the way up to the ceiling. Luckily, they had been assigned a floor spot, so they had minimal maneuvering to do. It looked nice. Definitely not like a station that would vaporize them and everything they loved for the smallest of transgressions.

Lug followed Anode off the ship with cautious steps, pausing to make sure it was locked behind her. Anode just made sure that she was following the device’s trajectory as she took off down a long hallway.

BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP. ATTENTION. YOU ARE MOVING FASTER THAN THE MAXIMUM SAFE LIMIT FOR THE SAFETY OF ALL PATRONS OF STATION KT-001. PLEASE LOWER YOUR SPEED TO THE STATED MAXIMUM SAFE LIMIT. PLEASE LOWER YOUR SPEED WITIN ONE HALF-KLIK OR ACTIONS WILL BE TAKEN TO LOWER YOUR SPEED FOR YOU.

“Ha! They should see me in jet mode,” Anode remarked, continuing to walk down the deserted hallway. “They wouldn’t know speed if it kicked them in the –oof!”

Ignoring Lug’s protests, Anode had apparently passed by the time limit for walking faster than a damn space sloth on Killtopia. The station had managed to attach two weighted anklets to her boots, causing her to stop in her tracks and hit the ground, hard, knees first.

She clambered to her feet, irritated, to Lug strolling up behind her, unencumbered, and whistling, the rude little fragger. “You should’ve listened,” Lug said with way too much joy as Anode struggled to move with the heavy braces on her feet. “You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

“You read all the rules, right? I know you’d stop me before I do anything that could actually kill me.”

“I would _try_ ,” Lug said, now clearly irritated as well.

“How long until these things come off?” Anode asked. She really could hardly move, and while the light coming from the device remained steady, she kept fearing that it was shrinking, meaning that their target was moving away from them. If they had left this blasted spaceport and expected Anode and Lug to chase them, they were in for a–

“Five times the time limit that was given to you for stopping the unsafe behavior,” Lug said. “And if you transgress again…poof.” She made a little motion with her hands that was obviously meant to convey _you would be annihilated._  

Anode struggled ahead until finally, blessedly, the braces unlocked from her feet. This time, she kept pace with Lug, who she was sure was walking at a pace slightly under the speed limit, just to be careful. “We’re getting closer,” she observed. The light had become brighter once again, which meant that either their target wasn’t moving or they were moving towards it faster than it was moving away. Either way, it meant that the target almost definitely hadn’t left in a ship.

“Please state your names and your business on Station KT-001,” a voice asked them from the ceiling when they reached a tall metal door at the end of the hallway. A device that looked like a tiny camera was pointed at them from the top of it.

“Anode, and, uh, bounty hunting,” Anode said. Lug cringed, but didn’t warn her to take immediate action, so Anode figured it wasn’t too big of a transgression.

“The purpose of Station KT-001 is limited to refueling and rest for small starship crews,” the droid said. Now a strange whine started up, emanating from the thing that she now suspected might _not_ be a camera. “Please state your business on Station KT-001.”

Anode rolled her optics at it, hoping that rudeness wasn’t one of the things that would get her and Lug killed. “Refueling and rest.”

The door in front of them opened. “You may proceed,” the voice said. “Welcome to Station KT-001.”

“Welcome my aft,” Anode said under her breath. The door had opened into a spacious atrium, smaller than the hold but still grandiose, filled with scattered droids and even more scattered patrons. The light was still leading them forward, but once they stepped into the room, it changed directions, leading them off to a smaller hallway on the right. The door to the hallway had been busted through and dangled by hinge.

They made for it, Lug on Anode’s heels as she held the device out in front of her. They passed by some tiny organics, the tallest of whom came up to Lug’s knees. The wretched bleeping started up again and Anode cringed before the voice even started.

ATTENTION. YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE STATION KT-001 INTERPERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT. THE STATION KT-001 INTERPERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT STATES THAT RUDENESS TO FELLOW PATRONS OF THE STATION IS NOT TO BE TOLERATED. YOU HAVE ONE KLIK TO RECTIFY THIS MISTAKE. ATTENTION. YOU HAVE VIOLATED—

The thing finally silenced itself because Lug had backtracked and knelt to address the organics. “Hi there. My name is Lug. I’m Cybertronian. How’s your day going?”

The organics responded with their own names and origins, and then kept on crossing the room. Anode waved at their Backs, hoping that Lug’s making nice plus that would fulfill their fragging politeness quota.

IF YOU HAVE NEED OF A REFERENCE TO THE COMMUNITY STANDARDS, PLEASE EXAMINE PAGES 76890-88742 OF THE KT-001 RULEBOOK. THE RULEBOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD AT PUBLIC ACCESS STATIONS THRUOGHTOUT THE SPACEPORT. PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT ACCESS TO THE PUBLIC ACCESS STATIONS IS LIMITED TO THIRTY KLIKS PER PATRON PER VISIT.

Anode ignored the noise and followed the device’s lead down the narrow hallway. They were surrounded by cleaning droids and there was really _really_ no one else here. Even the overhead lights didn’t seem to be working, but as Anode switched to night vision she realized that that wasn’t really true—there just weren’t any.

The light was leading them down this hallway, and it clearly wasn’t meant for public access—the exact kind of place Anode would have loved to explore on anywhere but Killtopia. She started to get suspicious when she accidentally stepped on one of the droids—she didn’t have to read the rulebook to know that that was definitely a killable offense. She said as much to Lug.

“You’re right,” Lug said. “My guess is that this hallway is a kind of blind spot? Which is super weird, because it’s an AI running this thing, not just a computer. Maybe there’s something going on here that makes the rules not apply? But I doubt the thing could have developed that kind of nuance since the version of the rulebook that I read came out.”

The light changed direction again, leading them off to the side, which appeared to be just a blank wall.

“Maybe the dead zone has something to do with the thing we’re looking for,” Anode said. She handed the tracking device to Lug and stepped up to the area of wall it had pointed to, examining it. Eventually, she stuck her hand back. “Knife, please,” she said.

“Breaking Killtopia is definitely a killable office,” Lug grumbled, but she handed over the scalpel anyway.

Anode slid the knife into the crack between wall panels and grinned when she heard a telltale click after a few feet of sliding. Just like she’d thought—this wasn’t a wall at all.

She wedged the knife further in, and then grabbed the eyescope that Lug handed her without her needing to ask. She couldn’t see behind the door with it, but she could see the locking mechanism and between the eyescope and a couple of final pokes with the scalpel, she unlocked it and started to wedge it open.

She hadn’t gotten more than a few inches of traction when the pointy end of a gun touched her forehead. “I am getting really sick of this aspect of today,” Anode grumbled. “Who are you, what do you want, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Considering you’re the ones intruding on my hiding spot, I think I should be the one asking the questions,” whoever was on the other side of the door replied.

Anode focused past the rifle with her night vision and could see the outline of a thin, dark body, probably organic, with large eyes and around Anode’s height. Their voice was slithery, almost hissing. Their expression was the most telling thing, though—not angry, but frightened.

The organism seemed to have done the same analysis on Anode. “You’re Cybertronian.”

“Before I confirm or deny that, I’m gonna need you to tell me which answer is less likely to get me shot,” Anode said.

Somehow, that was enough to get the gun removed from her forehead. She could see Lug sag in relief in the corner of her peripheral vision, but Anode pretended that she had never even noticed the gun’s presence. “I know Cybertronians. I know you are them. I know that you have no badges, which makes you less likely to be quick to kill.” The organic opened the door at that, which meant that Anode must have done something right. “Come inside.”

“What’s inside?” Anode asked, and then Lug nudged her with the tracking device, which was glowing brighter than ever and pointed towards the organic. “On second thought, I guess we’ll find out inside.”

Anode followed Lug into the cavern between the walls, which seemed to be all it was. Not the sleeping quarters that the station supposedly housed on another floor (those were likely even more barren than the rest of the station, because no one in their right mind would actually sleep here), or any kind of living quarters by nature at all. The organic had made it into one, though, which was pretty endearing. There was a stack of blankets made of some kind of fabric in the corner, and a few piles of junk that were clearly the organic’s possessions. On the pile of blankets lay…something. Anode’s night vision couldn’t quite make it out, but it looked mechanical. Maybe some kind of service bot?

Once the door was closed behind Anode, Lug, and the organic, the organic pressed a button and the room was illuminated, albeit only slightly. “I am Neela,” they said. Anode switched to daylight vision and then glanced again at the tracking device. It was glowing green now. They’d made it.

Lug was still standing near the door, so Anode turned her attention to the pile of junk nearest her while Lug introduced the two of them to Neela. It really did all seem to be junk, though—books with torn pages, fabric that looked like clothing, also worn and torn, trinkets that Anode’s practiced eye told her had little value, monetary or otherwise.

Then Lug stepped forward, and Anode realized that the tracker wasn’t pointing to the piles at all. It was, instead, pointing to the thing on the blankets.

It had raised its head by now, possibly when the lights came on, and Anode could see its narrow green optics surveying the room, set in a bronze face. It was laying in a strange tangle of limbs that had made its shape impossible to discern when Anode hadn’t been able to see clearly, but now it was clearly four-legged, slightly larger than Lug, and definitely sentient.

The familiar-looking optics, the transformation seams, clear but sealed up, that obviously hadn’t been used in quite some time. The thing was—

“You’re Cybertronian!” Lug said in astonishment, tucking the tracking device away into a compartment. “We’ve been looking for…something you have.”

Anode stared at the bot. “What did you steal from the warden at this sector’s public prison?”

The Cybertronian in its beast mode didn’t respond, at least not in words. It let out a low growl, though, not unfriendly.

Before Anode could say _more of this bullshit, ugh,_ Neela spoke. “He can’t talk to you.”

“How do you know that?” Anode asked, at the same time as Lug said “Why?” which was probably more imminently important.

“Are you familiar with domestication?” Neela asked.

Lug shook her head.

“Domestication is a process that physically and mentally breaks Cybertronians with beast modes,” Anode explained. She’d encountered the concept once, centuries ago, and had spent every hour since trying to forget. She looked back up at the Cybertronian on the pile of blankets. The optics that gazed back at her were…empty, she realized, devoid of the casual consciousness she was used to seeing, even as rarely as she saw other Cybertronians.

“I guess that’s why they wouldn’t tell us what we were after,” Lug said, voice grim. Anode slid her optics over to her.

“We’re not taking him back,” Anode declared. “We need a new plan. We’ll get rid of our tracking devices and—wait. _Why are you here_?” She was addressing the organic.

“We’re awaiting pickup by my organization,” Neela replied. “We rescue beings like him from people like your employer.”

“He is not—” Anode started.

She cut herself off when Lug forcefully elbowed her. “Never mind.”

“We were meant to rendezvous nearby, but my ship malfunctioned and we were forced to come here,” the organic continued. “But our ship was destroyed moments after we landed. For a _parking ticket_.”

“You do know what this station is called, right?” Anode said.

“I do, but we had no place else to go,” Neela said. “My organization has known of this hideout since the station was built, but we can’t venture out of this room without risking discovery and destruction. I have this.” They reached into one of the piles of junk with one long-fingered hand, and then placed a bulky ring on one finger. The ring glowed for a moment, and then Neela’s whole form did, and then an exact copy of Anode was standing where Neela had been. “The station tries to kill us every time we venture out. Even using this doesn’t help.” The form in front of Anode rippled again, and then Neela—what Anode assumed was Neela’s actual shape—was back, standing in front of them. They took the ring off again and gently tossed it back into the pile. “My contact was supposed to come rescue me yesterday, but they stopped responding to communications. Considering where we are, I have to fear the worst.”

Anode had more questions, a million more questions, but before she could open her mouth to ask any of them, a more immediate problem presented itself: stomping feet in the hallway, a change from the silence of the motionless cleaning droids. She tracked the steps in her mind, that turned out to be a waste of time. Like she feared they would, the steps stopped just outside their hidden door.

\--

Not for the first time, Lug wished that she could fight.

She could do a lot of things. She was good at metalwork, even the really intricate stuff. Her alt mode may be unique, out of all the bots she knew, but it was useful, especially with the way she and Anode worked together. She could get herself and Anode out of a lot of sticky situations with cleverness, invention, and fast thinking. But her talents stopped at physical confrontation. So this situation, with her and Anode and some skinny organic and a helpless mech trapped in a room with one entrance, with someone huge about to break down the door? Not her strong suit. Not what she would have signed up for.

The metal caved inward and finally gave, exposing the four of them to a collection of security mechs—the same frametype as the ones that had held guns to Lug and Anode just this morning.

Not just the same frametype, Lug realized, after having a moment to focus. The same mechs. They each wore the insignia of the sector’s public prison system on the left side of their breastplates. The same guns pointed at Lug and Anode.

“You are under arrest for attempts to escape a prison sentence,” the mech closest to them said. “Surrender to us immediately and you will face no further charges.”

Not surprisingly, Anode started to laugh. “That’s the play?” she gasped. “Send us to track this guy down, just to make sure we don’t die in the process, and then arrest us again? Please tell me someone told your boss how stupid that sounds.”

“You are under arrest for—” the same mech started up again.

“Like hell we are,” Anode said, and she jumped right at the mech, tackling him backward and sending four of the security mechs to the ground.

Lug may not have been good at fighting, but she figured she had about three and a half seconds to salvage the situation to her advantage while Anode punched and taunted. She turned to Neela.

“Here.” She handed them the keys to the ship that the warden had given them. “Floor spot 47F, visitor bay. Take him and hide out there for now. Be careful,” she said. And then, “don’t run.”

That was all the time she had. The security mechs had finally started to overpower Anode when Lug threw herself at them, aiming for the one that had his hands pinning down Anode’s wings. She saw Neela and the domesticated bot slip out the opening, and set her face into a relieved smile as she, too, was pinned to the ground.

The security mechs hauled them up. Lug barely paid attention, studying Anode. This was a familiar situation, the kind that it was usually Anode who got them out of.

And as always, Anode had a plan.

“Trip him,” she whispered when they were halfway across the floor. “Then hold onto me.”

Seeing her plan (and thinking that it was crazy, but, well, which of Anode’s plans weren’t?), Lug stuck out a leg and tripped the security mech holding on to Anode’s handcuffs, sending him stumbling. Without waiting to see if it had been enough, Lug reached as far as she could with her own hands cuffed behind her back and seized Anode’s wrist, just in time for takeoff.

Anode had unfolded her wings, over the cuffs, a skill she’d perfected a long time ago. She could sail short distances like that, but not _really_ fly like she could when fully transformed. Normally, it wouldn’t have been a good idea in this situation, because the guards would just catch them where they landed. Normally, they weren’t on Killtopia with one speeding offense already under their belt.

It was a straight shot back to the dead zone, and Anode and Lug were on the perfect path to land just inside. Lug’s angle, dangling from Anode’s wrist, afforded her a view of the security mechs right on their tail.

The station began to speak, and _this_ was the part that would take luck. ATTENTION. THE PUNISHMENT FOR A SECOND SPEED VIOLATION IS IMMEDIATE DEATH. PLEASE STAND BY FOR YOUR ANNIHILATION.

“Not today,” Lug heard Anode whisper as they sailed the final few feet towards the dead zone. Now there were lasers firing at them, barely missing Anode as she glided towards the dead hallway and hitting the security mechs head on.

 _We made it_ , Lug thought, as they sailed the last few feet towards the dead zone. Immediately, in the last possible second, something knocked Anode off course.

Lug lost her grip and sailed forward, tumbling into the hallway, smashing at least two cleaning droids. She stumbled to her feet and crept behind a larger droid to hide as what remained of the security team jumped on Anode and then hauled her to her feet. Lug was prepared to run, provide a distraction, anything that would let them solidify their escape, when they started walking away from her, pushing Anode back towards the ports.

Lug stayed frozen behind the droid until Anode and the security mechs had disappeared from sight. Evidently, they had forgotten about Lug. Because she was smaller, or not as readily violent—

\-- _or useless_ , her brain supplied unhelpfully. _You’re not a threat. What do you matter to them? What do you matter?_

Lug knew that she was stupid to resent the situation; it was an incredible advantage she had, the ability to slip from these mechs’ line of sight unnoticed. But she couldn’t quiet the tiny part of her that wanted to be good enough for their attention. Enough like Anode for their attention.

Self-pity wouldn’t make her any more useful, she knew. What would be useful to Anode right now would be for Lug to break some rules.

\--

Anode was half-hauled and half-pushed away from the hiding place and safety and Lug. She had really thought that her escape plan would work—and it half-had, she reflected. Lug had escaped. That was the important thing. Lug was the one who knew the rules here, who could use this place to their advantage. All day Anode had just been butting up against it and losing while Lug actually got things done.

Now Anode just had to stay alive and keep an eye out for escape opportunities.

She saw none on the way to their destination, a wide room with a few scattered ships in it. All government models. This must be the illegal parking cargo port. The security mechs dragged her to—she noted amusedly—the smaller of the two ships in the place, with a familiar Sector CXVIII-DOC insignia on the side.

They brought her up the ramp and all the way onto the ship, and Anode panicked for a moment—were they going to just leave, right now?—before realizing that they wouldn’t go anywhere without the domesticated bot, the treasure that all of this trouble had been for.

It was a surprise, though, when one push brought her face to…hips, really, with the warden.

“Care to explain yourself?” Anode asked him, craning her neck to attempt to meet his optics.

 “You’re not very smart, are you?” He glowered down at her. His next words were slow, as if he were addressing a child. “I couldn’t well set out to find my escaped pet on my own. _That_ would have been an egregious misuse of prison resources. Tracking escaped inmates, however, is a _proper_ use of prison resources. Your role ended when you found my pet. Once I have it and you two back in my custody, you’ll be serving out your full sentence plus additional time for this ill-advised escape attempt.”

“If I’m going to be staying with you, could I at least get this thing off?” Anode asked, managing to point to the tracking device on her arm even with her hands cuffed.

“No,” the warden growled, without even a twitch of his hand to give away where he was keeping the keys. “Where is your accomplice?”

It was then that an explosion rocked the ship, the aftershocks so intense that Anode was afraid the whole station would be destroyed.

“She’s not my accomplice, she’s my partner,” Anode said. “And as for where she is? My guess is she’s wherever that came from.”

\--

Lug stayed where she was for a few minutes—in the Killtopia dead zone, hidden from the open public area by the bulky droid. It was just enough time to come up with a plan.

Once she was sure the security mechs were all gone, she grabbed what she needed from the hidden room and then left the hallway, walking just under the maximum speed. She said a friendly hello to the few other travelers she passed, which reminded her to look up the eighteenth appendix to the Station KT-001 rulebook—the Interpersonal Code of Conduct.

Subsection 113 was _exactly_ what she needed. As she reached visitor port, her plan solidified.

She knocked on the door of the ship they’d brought, wincing when the noise turned out to be just under the maximum approved decibel level for the area. Neela poked half of their head over the small window in the door and then opened it for Lug. The domesticated bot sat at attention at their feet.

“Hi again,” Lug said. “Glad you made it. We’re going to go park in cargo port.”

“We can’t! We’ll be killed.” Neela stepped back, as though distancing herself from Lug would make Lug’s plan less likely to play out.

“No we won’t,” Lug said, crossing the cockpit to start firing up the controls. “But the ship will. And hopefully not just this one. I need your help, though. You’ll need this.” Lug tossed the appearance-changer toward them.

Neela smiled, obviously glad to have their tech back. “What do you need me to do?”

Lug explained the plan. Neela’s eyes narrowed in judgement when Lug described what would be done with the domesticated bot, but seemed satisfied with her ideas at large by the time Lug stopped. But then their eyes narrowed again. “That’s it? But how will we get out?”

“That’s the thing we’re going to figure out when we get there,” Lug said, starting the ship to cut short the argument. “The way these things go, too much will have gone wrong by then for the plan to matter anyway.”

Neela seemed to accept that. Lug took off, making sure to keep to the invisible exit lane in the center of the entryway to keep the ship from being demolished on the spot, and flew around to the other side of the station. While the ship’s machinery was converting from takeoff to landing mode and Lug was just looking at the outside of Killtopia, going over the plan again and again in her head, the domesticated bot trotted up to her and nudged at her elbow with his nose.

Lug looked down. “Hi,” she said to him. The bot pushed against her arm, and she put a hand on his head, as if it really was a nonsentient animal. “I wish I knew your name,” she said, stroking the top of his head without really thinking about it. “I don’t even know if you can understand me. But we’re going to get you someplace safe.” As if to punctuate her statement, the landing gear thudded into place and Lug put her hands back to the controls. It was then that she noticed Neela watching from behind her, arms crossed.

“You had better be correct,” they said. “He can’t go back to that—that thing.”

“I know,” Lug said. “Strap in. Did you do what I said?”

Neela nodded.

Lug turned her attention back to the route in front of her. “Then we’ve got a ship to explode.”

\--

Anode seemed to be forgotten in the chaos that followed; the warden and his cronies all raced off the ship to see what had happened. Anode followed, figuring that there was no reason for her to stay on the ship with her hands bound when she could be somewhere more interesting and more likely to contain a diversion and a chance of escape. Also, explosions. Explosions tended to bode well for Anode.

The scene outside of the warden’s ship was chaos. The space door seemed to have held, but the explosion had taken out a chunk of the floor and about half of the sleek ship on the other side of the hanger—a ship which, she belatedly realized, was adorned with the Galactic Council logo on the side.

And another ship, Anode realized. It was in so many small pieces that she hadn’t noticed, at first, that it had ever been there at all.

It was their ship, she realized, as a particularly large chunk of curved gray hull caught her optics. In the cargo port. Where Lug had been _very_ determined not to let them park.

She only had a second to be confused before Lug appeared from behind the other side of the ruined Galactic Council ship. She had the domesticated bot with her, occasional snaps of Lug’s fingers prompting it to follow her. Neela, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Anode tried to be still and unobtrusive, not attracting attention as Lug approached, but ready to jump in as soon as Lug’s plan revealed itself to her.

“I have your property,” Lug said as soon as she was close enough. She hadn’t even glanced at Anode, thought Anode knew Lug had noticed her. “You agreed that this would be a fair exchange for our freedom, correct?”

“That I did.” After saying that, the warden laughed. The sound was grating and somehow even creepier than his regular tone of voice and Anode couldn’t stop herself from wincing. That drew the attention of one of the security mechs standing behind the warden, but the mech quickly turned their attention back to the negotiation.

“So hand over my partner and the keys to these tracking devices and this guy’s all yours,” Lug said. There was something in her tone of voice though—pride. She had to know that this wasn’t going to work, right? Even if they were willing to sacrifice the domesticated bot, which Anode had _thought_ that they weren’t, the warden had already gone back on his word once. Lug knew that. Lug _had_ to know that.

Though she wouldn’t have admitted it, Anode was nervous. She trusted Lug. Didn’t she? Lug was the person who could always keep her from going too far, who could get them out of any situation Anode couldn’t—she didn’t want to doubt her, but right now, she couldn’t help it. _What was Lug doing?_

“Here. I’ll even start,” Lug said. She nudged the domesticated bot forward and one of the security mechs—the one who had been scrutinizing Anode—stepped forward to collect it in his arms. Lug looked up at the warden, challenging him to meet her eyes, as the security mech took several careful steps backward, until they and the domesticated bot had practically faded into the background.

 _Oh._ Anode still wasn’t sure what the plan was, but she was now sure that there was one. Lug just stood there, for an aching moment, and Anode just watched her, waiting.

Finally, the warden let out another of his horrifying, deep laughs. “Seize them,” he growled to his cronies when he was finished. Anode tensed, ready to bolt towards Lug and get them off this station, tracking devices be fragged, but Killtopia interrupted before she had taken half a step.

ATTENTION. YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE KT-001 INTERPERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT. KT-001 INTERPERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT STATES THAT DISHONESTY IN BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS UPON THE STATION IS NOT TO BE TOLERATED. YOU HAVE ONE KLIK TO RECTIFY THIS MISTAKE. ATTENTION. YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE KT-001 INTERPERSONAL—

The warden had frozen in place, face set in a glower, but Lug was failing to hide a smile.

\--CODE OF CONDUCT. KT-001 INTERPERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT STATES THAT DISHONESTY IN BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS UPON THE STATION IS NOT TO BE TOLERATED. YOU HAVE ONE HALF-KLIK TO RECTIFY—

“Fine!” the warden growled, and the station shut up. The telltale whine of the kill lasers, which had been probably seconds from firing, ceased with the voice. He took a set of keys out of a compartment, and stepped toward Lug, who looked up and confidently met his optics despite being a quarter of his size. He paused when he reached her, until the whine of the kill lasers started up again, and then he snarled and hastily unclipped the tracking device from her arm.

“Me next!” Anode said, raising her shoulder since her hands were still cuffed behind her back. She walked over towards the warden and Lug. The warden unlocked first the cuffs then the tracking bracelet, both far more violently than she would have preferred, but when he was finished he shoved her right toward Lug, which was a plus.

She stumbled slightly more than the amount the warden had put her off balance really required, and then Lug’s hands were on her shoulders, steadying her. Anode let herself have the moment, putting her own hands on Lug’s sides and resting her head on the top of Lug’s. She heard Lug smile, below her, and Anode smiled too, savoring this for as long as she could before--

A horn sounded from the airlock and Anode cringed. That was a familiar sound. A distressingly familiar sound. The airlock doors opened to reveal a ship, in a familiar shape and a familiar ugly green hue.

“I’ve got this,” Lug said,” pushing Anode away. Anode’s optics widened as she stepped back. The domesticated bot in the not-guard’s arms, the warden about to supervise its transfer onto his ship, the Galactic Council, who were here because—

“Who here is responsible for the destruction of Galactic Council property?” demanded the ugly organic in the lead of a squadron who had stepped off the ugly ship.

“Me,” Lug said. “Hi. I’m Lug. I’m a Cybertronian geologist. This prison warden picked me and my partner up for stealing an artifact from the Museum of Sector 118 History. An artifact which, as it happens, has already been returned, unharmed. He let us go, though, to track down this for him.” Lug pointed at the domesticated bot, clutched tightly in the hands of the one squad member. The squad member winced at the attention, still trying to fade into invisibility in the background.

“Your species is blacklisted by the Galactic Council. This means all of your actions take place outside the boundaries of the law, and that the law cannot protect you from any wrongs that may occur unto you. You are thus unable to be held liable for the destruction of Council property,” the lead goon from the Council ship said.

“I know,” Lug said smugly. “And since he’s—“ she jerked a finger at the warden—“the one who not only released us from prison but gave us the ship that did the damage to yours, he’s the one liable for damage to Council property.” Lug was already fighting a smile, clearly loving this, but she couldn’t seem to resist a full-on grin as she looked up to the ceiling and asked “Right?”

THE PATRON’S DESCRIPTION OF THE APPLICABLE POLICIES IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH GALACTIC COUNCIL LAW AND THE RULES GOVERNING STATION KT-001.

The Council goon looked confused at this. He took a step back and bent his head to consult the goon next to him. Anode looked at Lug, who was still grinning, hands confidently situated on her hips.

ATTENTION. ACCORDING TO POLICIES DESIGNATED BY THE GALACTIC COUNCIL AND STATION KT-001, THE PATRON WHO HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF COUNCIL PROPERTY MUST BE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY. THE PRESENT REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GALACTIC COUNCIL MUST COMPLY WITH THIS REQUIREMENT OR FACE DESTRUCTION. YOU HAVE ONE KLIK TO COMPLY. ATTENTION. ACCORDING TO—

The Galactic Council goon let out a guttural noise that was probably something profane in his language. Anode stepped forward, putting her own hands on her hips so that she brushed elbows with Lug. Lug looked up at Anode, beaming contagiously, and then looked away. Anode followed her gaze and saw the security mech that had taken the domesticated bot, who, on reflection, the domesticated bot had acted remarkably docile towards. The security mech, with the domesticated bot still sitting in their arms, was now walking toward them, but as they walked the edges of their form seemed to shimmer, dissolving from the blue and black frame of the security mechs into Neela’s slim frame and smooth blue skin.

“Nice work,” Lug said to them. She reached up, with the arm not touching Anode’s, to stroke the domesticated bot’s head. He butted his head forward and the corner of Lug’s mouth lifted into a smile as she continued to stroke him.

Anode returned her attention to the scene unfolding on the other side of the cargo port. The warden had submitted to arrest with surprisingly little argument, though that probably had a good bit to do with him glaring at the ceiling and the actual lasers that would shoot out of it if he protested the station’s decree.

Well, he submitted with little argument right up until he laid eyes on Anode, Lug, Neela, and the domesticated bot now sitting in front of Neela’s legs. When the warden’s optics widened in rage, the bot seemed to preen in response, lifting his head and then glancing up at Neela with what looked like it could have been a smile.

Despite the fact that she hadn’t really had anything to do with the turn of events, Anode met the warden’s eyes and grinned, bumping elbows with Lug again as she did so. The warden snarled in outrage, leaping forward from where the Galactic Council goon had him chained, getting one of his hands loose and reaching towards them.

Anode barely had time to think about pulling out a weapon before Killtopia intervened, shooting a laser clean through the warden’s outstretched arm. He howled, and the Galactic Council goon that had lost his grip seemed much more enthusiastic, this time, in restraining him. Anode, Lug, and Neela all watched as the warden was taken into custody and the Galactic Council ship left the hold. The security mechs had all retreated to their own ship and it looked like it was about to take off as well.

Anode turned to Lug and Neela. “Any ideas for getting us out of here?”

\--

Lug felt a momentary thrill of anxiety when Anode asked about escape plans because that was supposed to be Anode’s territory, damnit, but the feeling reached a crescendo when a familiar bleeping started from the speakers above them.

“What did we even do?” Neela asked as the familiar mechanized voice started with the usual ATTENTION.

“Never mind that, run!” Anode said, pushing on Lug’s shoulder to get her started.

“Speed violation,” Lug replied, yanking on Anode’s arm. Anode stumbled, but at least she slowed down. Lug scanned the room—the only remaining ship was the one the warden had arrived on, which was currently being occupied by his security team.

She didn’t even realize what the loudspeaker was telling them until its second repetition.

ATTENTION. YOU HAVE PERPETRATED ACTIONS DEFINIED UNDER THE STATION KT-001 RULEBOOK SECTION 5567 SUBSECTION 38 AS ‘DISTURBING THE PEACE.’ YOU HAVE ONE HALF-KLIK TO REMOVE YOURSELVES FROM STATION KT-001 PROPERTY.

“That’s exactly what we want to do!” Anode shouted at the station, which didn’t seem to want to listen to her. Or maybe it did, and it just didn’t like her, because less than a half-klik later, the lasers started.

“Run!” Lug yelled, because, well, a speeding violation was unlikely to make their situation any worse. She grabbed Anode’s hand and transformed to give Anode more dexterity as she ran back towards the dead zone.

She felt Anode stumble once, but they reached the dead zone just behind Neela and the domesticated bot. Lug let go of Anode and transformed back into root, opening her optics to see Neela staring at her. She considered letting out a pithy ‘ _what, you’ve never seen a bot turn into a backpack before?’_ but eventually decided that there were more pressing matters to attend to.

“What do we do?” she asked Anode. The lasers were still firing in the room they had just sprinted through, but as she watched, one of them speared a bystander—maybe one of the organics Lug had spoken to earlier, maybe just of a similar-looking species.

After that, the lasers seemed to stop. A small army of cleaning bots from another maintenance corridor descended upon the scene, a large one scooping up the body and others removing all traces of it from the floor.

Lug heard Anode chuckle from beside her, and felt a sudden—probably premature—rush of relief. Anode laughing meant that Anode had a plan. Anode having a plan meant that even though Lug would probably hate the specifics, they were getting out of here.

“How does Killtopia know who we are?” Anode asked, eyes still fixated on the cleaning bots and their work.

“I assume it registers your spark signature when you walk in? There was nothing Cybertronian-specific in the rulebook,” said Lug. She turned to Neela. “What about your species?”

They shook their head. “I don’t know. There’s no one else of my species in my organization. All I know is that the ring doesn’t help.”

Anode seemed to consider that for a second. “My theory is that it tracks your footsteps. Not every species has something like a spark signature. But if you register a person’s foot pattern and weight, you can always tell where they are.”

“Okay. That seems like the kind of information that does the _opposite_ of helping us,” Lug replied.

“That would be true,” Anode said slowly, and Lug rolled her eyes at how obvious it was that she was gearing up for something, “if we didn’t have _these_.” At the last word, Anode spun on her heel in a dramatic turn away from the hallway entrance and towards the rest of it, including, or rather, especially, the collection of maintenance droids of various shapes and sizes.

“How will those help us?” Neela asked, skeptically but not as biting as the version of the question Lug had opened her mouth around.

“They’re basic cleaning bots. They need orders from the station before they can do anything. They’re dumb as bricks on their own. So if I—” Anode trailed off, but she’d made her point, and Lug leaned over her shoulder to watch as she flipped of one of the larger droids upside down, so that its control panel was exposed between its treads. She held her hand out over her shoulder, and Lug was reaching into the appropriate compartment before Anode could say “Screwdriver.”

Lug watched as Anode exposed the control panel on the droid and made a few simple-looking tweaks. After she had screwed the panel back on, flipped the robot back right side up, climbed on top of it, and said “Forward”, the robot zoomed ahead, seeming to obey.

It worked a bit too well, though. The robot sped down the corridor, but Anode flailed when it first started to move, pinwheeling her arms and then landing on the floor on her aft with the bot skidding off without her. The poor little droid sped straight out of the tunnel and into a pillar in the center of the wide atrium, where it was immediately targeted by a barrage of lasers that left it little more than a charred, smoking lump.

Anode seemed to struggle for something to say, but Lug refused to let her, doubling over laughing instead. She skimmed her eyes over Anode, making sure she wasn’t actually seriously injured, but her frame looked fine, and there was nothing but annoyance on her face.

“It seems like it could work,” Neela said, interrupting Lug laughing at Anode and Anode glaring at Lug. “The robot didn’t get shot at until it hit the pillar. It crossed the room just fine.”

“Didn’t get shot at _until it hit the pillar,_ ” Lug repeated, highlighting the small detail that was that the robot had, in fact, been shot. She curbed her laughter, though, and tried to focus. Anode had half an idea. She was up. “So if we can ride these things around the station so Killtopia can’t tell where we are—where do we take them?”

“Visitor port. There’s a ton of ships there, probably most of them aren’t gonna leave because the crews are dead,” Anode said, now working on reprogramming another one of the bots.

“We won’t be able to start any of them without keys and access codes,” Lug said.

 “That’s a problem for future us,” Anode declared, turning back to work on the droid. Lug rolled her optics. _Of course it i_ s.

Anode’s next test of cleaning-droids-as-vehicles went much more smoothly, and soon enough the three largest remaining droids were responding to voice commands and—at Lug’s _strong_ suggestion—unable to move faster than the pedestrian speed limit. Neela and the domesticated bot took the largest one, and Anode and Lug took the two others. Lug’s had a wide platform and she tried to find a secure way to stay on it. She ended up seated, with her legs dangling over the front and her hands gripping the back.

“Forward!” Anode said, this time lying flat on her front on her own droid. It moved at a reasonable pace toward the entrance to the tunnel.

“Forward,” Lug said to her own. It obeyed instantly, jolting her a little as it started forward, following Anode. Lug cringed a little when she emerged into the atrium, a not unreasonable response considering that the last time they had been here, lasers had been shooting at them, but this time the station didn’t react to their presence at all.

It was frustratingly slow going back to visitor port. The droids only responded to Forward, Back, Right, and Left, which made navigating difficult. They even got a first-warning noise violation at Neela’s shriek when her droid narrowly missed hitting a wall, which would have caused her and the domesticated bot’s certain death. Lug couldn’t help but sigh with relief when they reached the familiar yawning ceiling and collection of ships that was Visitor Port, even though she knew that they were far from out of danger.

“Now what?” Neela asked, once their droids were in a line at the port entrance.

“Let’s take…” Anode glanced at the ships around them. “That one!” She pointed to a nearby ship with a garish purple and green color scheme but a familiar model—a small one outfitted for the transport of small and fragile cargo. Anode and Lug both had plenty of experience flying them.

Lug sighed. “Why the hell not?” She followed Anode to the ship.

She tensed when Anode jumped from the droid onto the ship’s ramp, but the station stayed silent. Belatedly, she realized that Anode’s feet hadn’t touched Killtopia itself—the ramp appeared to be safe territory.

“Go home,” Anode instructed the droid, and it turned around and zoomed back the way it came as Anode helped first Lug, then Neela and the domesticated bot onto the ramp as well.

“Can you pick the lock?” Lug asked Anode, who was frowning at the keypad at the door.

“Probably. But that security system doesn’t come with these things,” she said, pointing to the keypad. “If I mess up, the door bolts shut and we have no chance of getting in.”

“So don’t mess up,” Lug said, handing Anode the tools she’d need. “Besides, if there’s a fancy security system on this thing, there’s got to be a reason for it. Ideally something expensive and pawnable inside.”

Anode went to work on the lock, but pulled the tools out with a frustrated hiss after only a few seconds. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“We’ve got time,” Neela said, but Lug noticed that she was peering over her shoulder towards the entrance to the rest of the station to check if they had been followed.

Just then, the domesticated bot made a scuffling noise and then ran across the ramp. Neela shouted, but none of them could reach him before he’d jumped from the edge of the ramp into the ship through an open window.

Neela cursed and Anode sat frozen for a moment, tools held still in the air, as Lug watched them both with wide eyes. She was wracking her brain for something to say to break the tension when there was a scraping noise from the other side of the door and then it creaked open, the domesticated bot trotting out from inside of the ship.

Anode’s jaw dropped, but Lug and Neela just grinned. “Good job!” Lug said to him when he bumped at her leg. She scratched at the top of his head, and then he trotted off in response to Neela’s whistle from inside the ship. Lug followed him inside, shutting the door behind her. 

Liftoff went well—the ship was even fully fueled. Lug silently thanked its owners having the foresight to fuel up before being shot to death for some likely minor offense. They were off of the station and Lug was about to chart a course when the ship was rocked by an explosion and sent into a tailspin.

“What the _frag_?” Lug yelled. She swore again after checking the radar to answer her own question. “We’re under attack!”

“It’s that other ship from the prison!” Anode said, reporting from the back of the cockpit where she was craning her neck to see through a window behind them. “Why are they shooting at us?”

“No matter what Killtopia thinks, sector law still says we just executed a prison break,” Lug said, leaning hard on the controls to get them out of the way of a second barrage of missiles. She looked down at the radar for a moment. “They’re going to get us. I can’t outrun them.”

“Turn the ship around.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Turn it around! Back to Killtopia! Just trust me!”

“The day I trust your judgement is going to be the day I _physically die_ ,” Lug said, but she turned the ship around anyway, sailing just underneath their pursuers.

“Now what?” she asked, now on a collision course for the station. The ship pursuing them was turning, too, its controls smoother and more precise than what Lug was working with.

“Hold course,” Anode said confidently.

Lug muttered something about how people who _clearly had a death wish_ shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions, but she held the course.

“They’re gaining on us, right?” Anode said, peering over Lug’s shoulder to look at the controls.

“ _Of course they’re gaining on us!_ ”

“Good. Hold course.”

“Anode!” Lug was about five seconds from being too close to the station to avoid a complete crash landing.

“Wait for it.”

Lug was about to ignore her and break away from their _fragging_ collision course when suddenly a red laser lanced out of a tower on the station, targeting the ship behind them and destroying it in an explosion that even Lug, facing forward, could see the glow from.

“Okay, now turn! Turn!” Anode said unnecessarily, Lug having already yanked the controls to put them on a ninety degree angle from where they had been _far_ too close to fiery death.

“What just happened? What did you do?” Lug asked once she was sure they were safe from colliding but not sure if they were safe from Killtopia space lasers.

“I didn’t do anything.” Anode’s grin was blinding. “Station KT-001 Rulebook, Appendix 745, just enforced the proper punishment for excessive speed of approach.”

“You _read_ the _rules_?”

Anode shrugged at that. “I downloaded them. I flipped to a random page and it turned out to be something that could help. And here we are!” She spread her arms as if to indicate the empty space around them, the fully-fueled ship they were safe in, and Killtopia disappearing into a silver dot in the distance. Lug heard Neela laugh in surprise—the first time she’d heard them laugh at all, she realized.

“I hate you. I actually hate you,” Lug said to Anode, keeping her eyes fixed on the controls as she piloted.

“I know.” Anode put an arm around Lug’s shoulder and pressed her lips to Lug’s cheek before pulling away with a happy grin. Lug couldn’t resist smiling as well, watching out of the corner of her eye as Anode crossed her arms behind her head, put her feet up on the dashboard, and stared out at the stars in front of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm at choomchoom on tumblr, occasionally producing (less extensive) gay robot content
> 
> shoutout to not_whelmed_yet for beta'ing this while concurrently producing oodles of superior-quality fic. thank you! :D


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